40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 3:6-4:4 (Episode 445)

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

The people are proclaiming all the wrong things. There is a plague of pride and a famine of humility. God's judgment turns everything upside down. But there is still a promise of forgiveness and cleansing coming. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education   What's New from 1517: Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi Junk Drawer Jesus By Matt Popovits Signup For Free Advent Church Resources for 2024 Clothed with Christ by Brian William Thomas   More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird  

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And again, our end of year need is $300,000. Please visit 1517.org slash donate to make your year-end gift now. Thank you for partnering with us to keep this message alive and thriving for generations to come. God's peace be with you. Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament It is a 1517 podcast, network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there.

And while you're over there, check out everything else that 1517 is doing. It's a lot of stuff. I mean, have you checked out the academies? I mean, I say it all the time, and you might not have done it yet. Why not? There's a bunch of them over there. There's so many over there that it's impossible that there's not one that you're like, oh, I need to learn about that.

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And, of course, make your way over to the Donate page and support the work that 1517 is doing. You can give a one-time gift, be a reoccurring supporter, whatever you want to do. And thank you so much to you who do that. It is how all of this is made possible. We are in Isaiah chapter 3. We got through the first five verses last week. That's where we ended. God is saying through the mouth of Isaiah, he's telling the people, hey, I've got some things against you.

I've got some things that I'm not happy about, and there's going to be a judgment coming. And let me tell you, that judgment is not going to be pleasant. It's going to result in all kinds of bad things. In fact, everything's going to get turned upside down. People who should not be rulers, they're going to be rulers. People are going to oppress one another. And, man, even young people are going to be insolent to elderly people. Imagine that.

That one apparently has not yet been reversed, I guess. But that's all going to happen. And we ended, and he is just going to continue along these lines and is really trying to, in this section, paint a picture of it's going to be so bad that there's going to be stuff happening that doesn't even make sense. I mean, like your whole society is going to get just completely turned upside down and all kinds of strange things are going to be happening. And we start here this week in verse 6 with a weird one right off the jump.

Yeah, well, you see this a lot in the prophets, sarcasm. I mean, there's a lot of sarcasm that we've seen in other parts of the Old Testament. But the prophets are masters of sarcasm. I mean, they would do really good on some social media channels like Twitter. I think they'd get a lot of followers just because of their creative ways of expressing contempt for the various evils of the society. So he starts out here by saying, so here's what's going to go down. When everything's turned topsy-turvy and you've got boys being princes and infants being rulers over the people. he said here's what's going to happen it's going to be so bad that a man will take hold of his

brother in the house of his father saying hey you have a cloak why don't you be our leader and this heap of ruin shall be under your rule so i think you it's pretty this sarcasm is pretty obvious so you just picture this you know say it's a house that's been bulldozed it's just a mess and uh there's one guy everyone else is you know either scantily clad or they're you know they don't have any clothes at all and somebody's like hey you got a clue you got some clothes why don't you be our leader yeah and this is this heap of ruins well this could be your this would be your castle so of course this is just the prophetic way of saying things are going to be sober not as bad but so ridiculously bad that this will be the situation just i don't know

choose some random guy look he has a coat on looks like a prince to me he's the ruler over this this heap of ruins yeah the qualifications have really declined uh who should we who should be the prince i don't know find somebody with something on his back i guess probably the guy yeah the bar has set had been set extremely low at this point and just to continue with this crazy illustration he goes on to say basically this guy won't even accept rule over the heap of ruins because verse 7 says, he's going to respond to you. He's going to say, I'm not going to be a healer. Literally, it's like a, I think the Hebrew there is like a binder, you know, you're like a bind a wound, you bind a broken bone up, something like that. I'm not going to be a healer because in my house,

there's neither bread nor cloak. So you're not going to make me leader of leader of the people. So, you know, you might think, oh, well, this, this dude's going to jump at the chance to be called a ruler and a king and a prince. No, he doesn't want that responsibility. He at least has a grain of sense in his head saying, listen, I'm not going to take care of you. I don't have enough myself. I don't have any bread. I don't have any extra clothes laying around. And I've seen the situation of this people. I mean, they're so beat up. They're so wounded. I got so many broken bones. I'm not going to be your doctor. I'm not going to fix this situation. So you're not going to make me leader of leader of the people so even those who are kind of the the very

lowest choice won't take the position that's the that's the situation that is going to be in in jerusalem and he goes on to verse 8 to to mention jerusalem he says for jerusalem has stumbled and judah has fallen because their speech and their deeds so what they say as well as what they do are against the lord defying his glorious presence that word for defying in hebrew marah is it's a big word in all over the torah for like kind of rebelling against god you know anytime israel rebelled against him like if you remember the other was a early in exodus there was a place called marah like marah and meriva they were named that because there's a rebel against the lord there so that word marah is the same one that's used here for defying or rebelling against god

they've literally rebelled against the the eyes of his glory which the esc renders is his glorious presence so it's kind of like this idea of their they're right in god's face they're in his eyes his glorious presence and yet they still rebel against him and uh oh yeah one more thing this the heap of ruins that the guy wouldn't be the leader over that's the same route that we have here for Jerusalem has stumbled. So we might, just to show how these are the same, something like, Jerusalem has become

a heap of ruins, and Judah has fallen. And the reason they have is, well, it's blatant. It's right there, because their speech, what they say, and their deeds, what they do, are against the Lord. So that is the ultimate cause of

this downfall. It is very much a for me or against me kind of god right and so uh and the in his mind right here like it doesn't just say that like hey they've you know they're they're not doing the good things that i like so i'm upset about this no like they're they're actively rebelling against me like right right in front of me right like i mean this is like a a child that uh which i know about uh right now where you're like hey don't touch that

so we have a Christmas tree up probably Christmas will be over right on top of us when this airs but we have a Christmas

tree up right now and I also have a 20 month old that thinks that that is a new thing that she wants to really explore

so there's a lot of me saying hey hey don't do that don't touch that don't touch that and sometimes she'll look at me

dead in the eyes turn her head look at me right in the eyes and then be like reach out grab that thing and that's not a sort of accident right that's this is it isn't just that i'm like hey she's not really listening to me oh no she heard me and then went and did the exact thing i said not looked you dead in the eye and then turned and did the very thing you told her not to watch this old man yeah i gotta have a granddaughter who's

four they were with us a couple days this weekend and yeah i experienced that firsthand you know they don't even try and like do it in a sneaky sort of way it's like look you dead in your eyes and then turn around and do the very thing that you told them not to do yeah this is this isn't learned behavior by the way it's just like built into the very dna of every single every single person well and this is it this is why like it is a defiance right like that that is a yeah that is an act of rebellion yeah you can't say oh well i didn't know what i was doing i mean it was i didn't realize i was doing this out of ignorance no this is like you know knowingly willingly looking god in the face and saying what you told me not to do i'm gonna do

what you told me to do i'm gonna do i'm gonna do the opposite so there's no there's no room here for saying well they just wasn't aware i wasn't educated enough or i just didn't have enough you know moral maturity to realize what was going on here oh no you you knew and you still did it in fact he goes on to kind of build on this idea by uh using an example that we've already seen the archetypical city of rebellion of you know just defiantly looking up toward heaven and saying to god i'm gonna do what you don't want me to do and of course that archetypical city is sodom Because he goes on to say, the look on their faces bears witness against them. They, not just do, they proclaim their sin like Sodom.

They do not hide it. Woe to them, for they have brought evil on themselves. You can't get much more defiant in your face than that. I was looking this morning, and I believe, let me check my note here. But I believe, yeah, so Isaiah uses the simile of Sodom, so like Sodom or as Sodom. Jeremiah uses it, Zephaniah uses it, Jesus, of course, uses it, and I believe John uses it too. So you've got Old Testament, New Testament examples of this paradigmatic city of open rebellion against God now applied to all places to the people of Jerusalem.

They don't hide it, and so woe to them. This seems like a double offense, because, I mean, what is it that, like, and you see this language, like, all over the Bible, and this isn't, like, exclusive. We use this language in 1517 all the time to talk about the gospel, that we would say that we're proclaimers, right? This is what we've been—the mandate that we've been given is to proclaim salvation on account of Christ alone to the ends of the earth. This is the thing that we've been given to do. But even in the Old Testament, it's like what?

To proclaim the excellencies of God. This proclamation is still something that has been given to the people of God from the beginning to do. which and here he uses this word where he's like well they're definitely not doing that i mean they're not over here proclaiming uh all the the wonderful things that god has promised and the wonderful things that god has done and when you see this in the psalms the psalms are are very much proclamation you see lots of they recount that the great deeds of the lord and all this stuff and the things that he's promised and the that he's kept his word all these kind of things well they're they're proclaiming all right but they're not proclaiming that uh they're proclaiming

their sins like sodom and like this is a yeah this is a a another offense to god where it's like you can't even do proclamation right i mean you you like not only it's not as though like you're sinning in silence right like you're sinning and then you're and then you're proclaiming it to the world like look at look at look at all this stuff that we're doing that is against what god has said yeah yeah so open verbal defiance against God and in the end he says you have brought evil on they brought evil on themselves you know I we I was thinking this morning this you know at first I thought well this is kind of the reigning dogma of our times right that it's always somebody else who is to blame for whatever is going on with us but then then I kind of caught myself and I was

like no actually that's not just the reigning dogma of today I mean that goes all the way back to Adam, right? The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the trees. So pointing elsewhere, trying to say someone else is to blame that goes all the way back to, to the first father. But I mean, it still, it still remains, of course, the, uh, the primary reaction that sinners have when they are accused. Well, you know, I wouldn't have done it except for this reason, these extenuating circumstances, this person, but you have this, uh, it's so clear cutting the prophets they have brought evil on themselves so the buck always stops with the center there's no there's no pointing the finger at someone else here yeah yeah so i'm uh i'm i'm

currently studying uh dante and i just finished the uh the first volume which of course is on is on hell the inferno and one of the one of the fascinating things about all the various characters that dante encounters as he goes through all the various levels of hell is that they're always blaming somebody else. It almost becomes darkly humorous after a while. They're still all about themselves. They're still blaming other people. They're blaming extenuating circumstances. Their world has been shrunk down to just their ego. And I thought of that when I saw this this morning, how they brought evil on themselves. They basically get what they wanted. They wanted a life that was all about themselves. And that's, in the end, what they get.

so bringing evil on themselves that's a that's a pretty pretty clear theme old and new testament all right so 10 going on tell the righteous so we've shifted here from the wicked to the righteous tell the righteous that it will be well with them for they shall eat of the fruit of their deeds right so we had the words and the deeds being against the lord a few verses earlier and And here we have the contrast of that. Tell the righteous that it should be well with them. They shall eat of the fruit of their deeds. You know, all these themes you see all over the scriptures.

You know, you reap what you sow. But then he shifts automatically from the righteous to the wicked. He says, woe to the wicked. It shall be ill with them for what their, his hands have dealt out shall be done to him. So, I mean, clear evidence that you've got, if you're a bad tree, the bad fruit, good tree, good fruit, righteous, wicked, this sharp contrast we see in the prophets all over the Psalms as well. Psalm 1 starts out this way, right, with the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. And then he goes in verse 12 to kind of as a bookend to verse 4, where he said, I'm going to make boys their princes and infants shall rule over them. Once more, he's going to point to how everything is upside down because he says, my people, infants are their oppressors and women rule over them.

Oh, my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your pads. So apologies to all the ladies out there if you don't like that verse. But keep in mind, the context in which this was written, in which basically his point is that everything is upside down. Of course, ordinarily, who is ruling over you? Who are your leaders? Well, it's the princes, it's the kings, it's not women who are ruling over you. And so this is just basically pointing to how society has turned everything upside down. And infants aren't typically oppressing you.

Yeah, right. Well, I mean, maybe that's how mothers of newborns feel. This infant is oppressing me. Yeah, this is underscoring the fact that things are so crazily backwards that even infants are your oppressors. Okay, now I wish I could say that, man, we're going to shift now from law to gospel. We're not there yet. We have to get down to chapter 4 to get there. So let's keep moving.

I'll read 13 through 15. And this is kind of a, so picture this as a kind of a courtroom. So when he takes his stand to contend, that verb in Hebrew is reave. We'll see, we'll actually see this over the coming months and years as we work away through more of the prophets. It's a pretty common, pretty common word. So it's a, a reave is like a, it's a legal setting, kind of a courtroom, courtroom drama that's unfolding here. so god has taken his place to contend he stands to judge peoples the lord will enter into judgment with the elders and princes of his people all right so god is going to be uh in this courtroom

entering into judgment so what is the crime that's been committed that's what he goes on to say it is you and the that you is emphatic in the hebrew so i don't know it'd be something like As for you, you have devoured the vineyard. The spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor, declares the Lord God of hosts. So this is another very common message about the prophets. We're going to see it in the minor prophets. We're going to see it in the rest of Isaiah as well.

Or basically, those who have the power, those of the wealth, rather than using this in such a way as to benefit their neighbor, are going out of their way to gain more of this, more power and more wealth by treating the poor or the widows or the orphans or anyone who is kind of down on the lower part of society with contempt, with hatred, with dishonesty. whatever it takes in order to get more from them than they've already taken before so here you have the sport of the poor in their houses they're grinding the face of the poor that verb is used literally elsewhere for like when moses ground that golden calf up into powder same verb used there when people grind grain to make flour same verb used there so it's really a it's extremely violent and graphic image when you think about grinding somebody's face uh that's what's what's going on here in other words you are destroying the poor in order to enrich yourselves that's the indictment that god is bringing against the especially the elders and princes of his people

who would be entrusted with the office of actually taking care of the poor and the needy and the disenfranchised in Israelite society. Yeah, there's a connotation here that something terrifying has happened, which is that the Lord has put on his judge hat, as it were, right? So the Lord has moved out of this role into this role, and he has taken his place in the courtroom, which is not what you want, right? So this is not the hat you want the Lord to be wearing, because this is going to turn out very bad for you. And once he's stepped into that role, when he's saying, I'm now stepped into the courtroom, and I have this thing against you

that you have taken advantage of the poor intentionally. You're trying to devise more ways to do so. So I think of – this is like taking advantage of somebody that has nothing and then rubbing their face in it in the most violent way possible, almost like this kind of grinding the face thing. It's like to not be like – it's not as though you're just doing this thing and it has a bad effect on these other people, but you're like, sorry it has to be that way.

It's, hey, I know that was terrible, but you can expect a lot more of that in the future. I'm going to keep doing that. I'm going to find more ways to do that. And you're sort of rubbing their face in these actions that you're doing and informing them that there'll be no end to it anytime soon, right? Yeah. Yeah, so if people are familiar with the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in the Gospels, It'd kind of be like if you added to that parable and every time the rich man left his house after feasting sumptuously and wearing his, you know, purple and luxurious clothes, if he he walked to where Lazarus was and laughed at him and kicked him in the ribs as he went on his his merry way. That's kind of the idea here.

You just it's taken things to such an extreme that it's hard to believe it's that bad. But in fact, that actually is. And then having said all that, talking to especially the elders and the princes of his people, those who were charged with actually making sure these things didn't happen, and now not only allowing them, but actively engaging in them. So having taken them to task, he's going to switch gears, in fact, in almost the rest of the chapter, beginning with verse 16, to shift the focus from the elders and the princes to the women. So basically no one is going to be spared this indictment. And the women in particular here are not just kind of the women of society, but those who have profited by what presumably their husbands have done. So if their husbands are the ones who are the elders and the princes, who are not just oppressing the poor, but taking from the poor and mistreating the poor, what are they doing with that money? well one of the things they're doing with that money is becoming rich and as they become rich

their wives and presumably also their daughters are able to benefit from these ill-gotten gains and one of the ways they benefit from these ill-gotten gains is by accumulating for themselves expensive clothing and jewelry in which they go about town not just to show off but in sort of a a haughty way that looks down on everybody else who doesn't have what they have so that's kind of a setup for what i'm about to about to read so verse 16 goes on so after the whole grinding the face of the poor he goes on to say the lord says because the daughters of zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks glancing wantonly with their eyes mincing along as they go tinkling with their feet so because of all this therefore verse 17 the lord will strike with a scab the

heads of the daughters of zion and the lord will lay bare their secret parts so we're going to hear this contrast again in just a minute where you know you have the haughty looks and the uh the outstretched necks and this focus upon pride, that God is going to react to that by putting a big scab on the haughty heads of the daughters of Zion. And not only that, but he's going to expose their neckiness. He's going to lay bare their secret parts, which is a Hebrew word, even in modern Hebrew, which is a reference to the private parts of a woman. He's going to take away all of this fancy stuff with which they've covered themselves and going to expose them but i know that we've said this like a bunch of times right like so that then uh when when god's finally had

enough like there's always you can always find some idolatry and we're like hey god's had enough wonder if there's any idolatry here every time there is so you have this sort of a now that you're you're trying to rank sins but uh idolatry is like way up there i mean it's the thing that god finally can't handle but right underneath it is like an unsuspecting thing that god just absolutely hates and is pervasive throughout scripture uh and sometimes it's pride and sometimes it's described as a haughty look or whatever but pride and haughtiness god finds disgusting like this is this is how it is and it always it comes up all the time where when when you have idolatry happening it's always joined up with pride like and and whenever there's

like this this oppression of those who don't have anything there this is always joined up with pride this is it's pride that would make you uh proclaim uh your sins out instead of uh instead of the excellencies of god like it's pride that would do that and and the and the thing about about pride is is that that one of the reasons that god hates it is because pride cannot exist with something that god also loves which is like humility right and so like when uh this is why you see in jesus says this sort of stuff all the time like if you were to be like what is what is and we talked about this i don't know if it was last episode of the episode before but you you always have this i'm going to take the proud or the exalted and make them low and then i'm going to take the low

or the humble and make them high jesus says this sort of stuff all the time this is how it works like like pride and haughtiness is like is an affront to god humility is something that god esteems like very very much i don't know if he esteems many things higher than if you were to do a survey of the of the scriptures it's a short list of that would that would come up with humility as things that god esteems and loves yeah and there's such an intimate link between idolatry and pride because ultimately what does idolatry mean idolatry no matter whether it's focused upon you know bale or asherah or in modern day terms you know money or power or sex or whatever it might be ultimately all idolatry is idolatry of the self we've shifted our focus

to from God to the ego. Well, okay, if you're engaging in ego worship, what is the immediate fruit of that? Well, of course, pride, because that's what pride is all about. Pride shrinks everything down to me, me, me. I'm full of myself, and I have kind of engaged in self-divinization, made myself out to be a god. So idolatry and pride are inextricably linked together. And of course, That's why God hates them both, whether it's a focus on idolatry or a focus on pride. You're really looking at the same thing. One is just classified more as a vice and one more as a heresy or, you know, the false worship. But they're basically the two sides of the same coin, idolatry and pride.

I can't remember what church father it was, but someone, some church father, some ancient guy has this line, which I never forgot. from the first time i heard it uh which was uh you said that one can be humble or be humbled there is no other way so these are these are in other words these are the options like so one can either be humble or one can be humbled take your pick take your pick yeah yeah yeah i mean that's a man you're you're looking at one of the lifelong works of the spirit in in the life of a christian is uh is humbling us kind of uh tying rocks onto our backs so we're weighted down and looking more toward the ground uh by the way being humble is i would recommend that route uh being humble is a much better experience than being humble that that if you're if you're young

and you're just trying to figure out which of these options you might want to try to to do I recommend practice humility before humility is practiced upon you. I strongly recommend that from a very painful personal experience. Being humble is definitely the way to go. Okay, so I'm just going to read 18 through 26 because it really forms a unit. We're going to have a lot of details thrown in here about what the ladies of Jerusalem were wearing and then what that's going to be exchanged for when God humbles them because of what they've done with their pride and haughtiness.

In that day, the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets and the headbands and the crescents and the pendants and the bracelets and the scarves and the headdresses and the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets, the signet rings and nose rings and festal robes, the mantles the cloaks and the handbags the mirrors and linen garments the turbans and the veils feels like we're like taking a stroll through the jerusalem mall here looking at all the things so all all of these details all of these articles of clothing and the perfume and the purses and you know everything which again keep in mind is indicative of the affluence of

these women which affluence has been gained by stealing from and oppressing the poor all right so it's not these things in and of themselves that are the issue it's what they are indicative of so god is going to take all that away and what's he going to put well verse 24 explains it instead of perfume there will be rottenness instead of a belt a rope instead of well-set hair baldness instead of a rich robe, a skirt of sackcloth, and branding instead of beauty. Well, there's a line that'll stick with you. Your men shall fall by the sword, your mighty men in battle, and her gates. Now we've switched from a focus upon women, per se, to Lady Jerusalem.

Her gates, that is Lady Jerusalem's gates, shall lament and mourn. Empty she shall sit on the ground. and i'm gonna that's the end of chapter three i'm gonna pick up the first verse of chapter four because that is really where this whole section ends seven women shall take hold of one man in that day saying we will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes only let us be called by your name take away our reproach so this day that's referenced back in verse 18 is of course talking about this coming day of judgment where everything which was symbolic of the impoverishment and the oppression of the poor which had enriched those who are now

you know haughtily pridefully displaying all of this that's going to be exchanged for its obverse so rottenness instead of perfume a rope instead of a belt so on and so forth and the end will be that not just the women but jerusalem will sit lamenting and mourning on the ground and women are going to be there's going to be so few men i mean the destruction is going to be so bad most of the guys are going to get killed that seven women are going to see a guy and be like will you be our husband you know we're not even asking the the bare minimum a husband should should provide like clothes and food we'll we'll find somebody to take care of ourselves just take away this reproach which we have because we have no one and let all seven of

us marry you that's all that we all that we ask so i mean it's it's it's this kind of hyperbole that is accenting the totality of the coming humbling that's going to befall these folks there's a like so when you think about pride you know every everybody uh you know has pride like pride is a thing as a as a as a thing that everybody is fighting against but when when you have there's when you describe this haughtiness there's like a um there's like an added cruelty to like to haughtiness right uh there's there's this like haughty like there's pride and then there's pride on display with like utter disregard for the suffering of anyone else or uh and so much so that you would take the little that people that have almost nothing have to enrich yourself

pride is bad obviously and then like haughtiness is like there's it's gross like if you saw it you'd be like that's that's gross yeah i mean i think that's one of the reasons kind of built into human nature that i mean there's sort of there's a positive and a negative side of this so you know when we see someone like that who is uh how do we put it well they're taking down a notch right or their the bubble is is burst there's there's the negative part of us that kind of engages in schadenfreude you know we're rejoicing over the downfall of somebody else there's a positive side to that too though where we can see that happen and we can actually say that's going to hurt them now but it's going to be better for them in the long run

yeah and i think especially when you've experienced it yourself when uh you know maybe you weren't haughty but you were prideful so maybe you didn't like put it all out there but still when you were honest with yourself you you knew this was happening and then instead of choosing the path of humility you went the path where god humbled you it's terrible hurts i mean And just maybe not the worst thing that can happen, but one of the worst things that can happen is just as far as the fallout and the pain that's associated with that. But it's also one of these lessons that, in retrospect, you're like, okay, that needed to happen. The loss needed to take place in order that I might be rescued from myself, more or less. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so we got a few minutes left. Want to jump into this next section? Yeah. End on some good news? So this is one of these jarring transitions that we've talked about that you have frequently in the prophets. So we go from what seems to be like the end and complete destruction to where we now have the good news. In that day, so we've had in that day a few verses previous, right? In that day, there's going to be judgment.

Well, now we have another day coming. So in that day, the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious. and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of israel and he who was left in zion and remains in jerusalem will be called holy everyone who's been recorded for life in jerusalem when the lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of zion and cleanse the bloodstains of jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning stop there that's the end of verse four so the branch of the lord we're going to hear we're going to encounter that phrase multiple times as we work our way through the prophets here

is one of its earliest occurrences at least canonically speaking and this this idea of a branch springing forth is going to be personified more and more as you work your way into like to jeremiah and other prophets to be a it's not really a code word it's more like a title for the messiah so that he is the lord's branch he's the one who sprouts forth from the the stump of jesse so a very it's a tree image basically of this branch coming up here though you have kind of two sides he's called the branch of the lord as well as the fruit of the land which i kind of like. I mean, in the bigger picture of scripture, I see this as the two natures of Christ. He's the branch of Yahweh. He's divine, but he's also the fruit of the land. He's also one of us.

So this is the Old Testament way of describing who Christ is. He's the Lord's branch. He's also the fruit of the land. And he's going to be for the pride and the honor of the survivors of Israel. He's going to be for their glory. He's going to provide goodness to them. And those who are left in zion in jerusalem they're going to be called holy they're they're recorded for life in jerusalem so there's here's one of these many biblical references to the book of life so recorded for life in jerusalem and the reason they're called holy the reason that they have uh their name recorded in the book of life is because god has done his work he's washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and he's cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment

and by a spirit of burning. So it's this idea of God has stepped in, he's seen the situation, and he has done what needs to be done in order to make sure that his people are clean, his people are forgiven, his people are sanctified, and he covers their dishonor and their shame with his own glory and his own in his own beauty this is just the preaching of the beautiful gospel with you know in old testament sort of way but this is the way he is describing the coming work of christ yeah i mean this is what saying that uh so you have this branch so this is saying uh all right well this is all terrible but uh christ is going to come and he's going to institute baptism that's if you're going to like summarize this right so like christ will come and he will

institute this thing that will wash away your filth and cleanse all your blood stains. He's going to come with a way for you to be made clean. Yeah. Made clean of the filth, of the

blood stains, of everything that has polluted you. And not only will you not be clean, but you're also going to be holy. Drawn into the orbit of his sanctification and thus be made beautiful and righteous as he himself is, which is a pretty good place to end.

That's pretty great. Well, we're going to get a little bit more of that next episode as we wrap up this Chapter 4, so make sure you tune in for that. Chad, I will see you then. All right, see you then. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh